Abstract:

The importance of the role and functions of brands in "old" well established markets is widely recognized. Concepts such as brand images, brand personality, or brand profiles have been successfully applied by Western market researchers, in order to learn about what consumers associate with given brands, their opinions, understanding and perception of them. And on the other hand, how those are related to such important phenomena as brand equity, consumer loyalty, consumer involvement, or preferences for different brands competing on the market (Biel 1992 Subash C. Jain, 1990 Wilkie, 1990). Various conceptualization of "brand image" appear in consumer behavior and marketing literature. However, it is widely accepted that in today's market situation brand positioning of - especially low involvement products - cannot be made on the basis of intrinsic, functional product characteristics. Instead brand positioning is based (more) upon subjective, attributed characteristics, thus taking into account symbolic and intangible aspects (Poiesz, 1989). An array of techniques - qualitative and quantitative - have been developed to study brand attitudes and brand images. However, applying those in "young", newly established markets involves several difficulties. Those difficulties are the subject of my paper. Basically three kinds of interconnected problems can be identified: - linguistic - consumers don't universally understand the term "brand"; - historic - under socialism the concepts of brands could not function; - social consciousness - Polish consumers are not yet used to think in terms of symbolic characteristics of brands.